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Last month, my friend Whitney Johnson wrote a great post about entitlement being an innovation-killer. Please read it if you haven’t. I’m sure we all know examples of this in many aspects of our lives. In some corporate cultures, Innocide is brazen and in others incredibly polite and subtle. Perhaps the subtlest of all is Suinnocide – killing innovation within us. Most of us are masters at that!

Some organizations have an innovation process that includes assessment of successes and failures – but they measure what’s already gotten into the innovation pipeline, not what didn’t even make it in! Innocide is pre-process murder. It’s subtle, pervasive, socially acceptable and pernicious…which makes it hard to measure and harder to fix.

Since this is difficult, how can we start to reduce our organization’s (and our own) Innocide rate? Start identifying Innocide when you see it! You could create a cadre of Innocide Detectives! I bet you already have some – the ones you tend to dismiss or view as radical, rebellious, heretical or ‘out there’. Give it a try. This week, start listening for key phrases like But, Ought. Try asking “What if” or “Why not” or say “Yes, and” – see what happens. Perhaps you can reduce your Innocide rate before you even know what it is! Please let me know how it goes!